Rio Helmi, a true seeker of meaning in life

I Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

Rio Helmi was busy tying his shoelaces when he sensed a strong wind sweeping across him, looked up and saw His Holiness the Dalai Lama standing in front of him, closely examining his face, his kneeling position and his untied shoelaces before exploding into a seemingly never-ending boisterous laughter.

"Perhaps because I looked so funny, with my clean-shaven head, and all those cameras around my neck and the struggle with the shoelaces. Little did I know that my kneeling position at that moment was similar to the position one must assume when he is taking the Boddhisattva's vow," Rio recalled of his first experience with the Tibetan spiritual leader who would influence his life in such a tremendous way.

"After that long laughter, he lifted me up, asked me some friendly questions and swept me up to join his entourage that was just about to embark on a trip to Borobudur. I was speechless, and all I could think of was 'Wow, what's happened?'" Rio said.

That hilarious encounter between Rio Helmi, then a photographer for Sinar Harapan daily and Mutiara magazine, and the most important spiritual figure of Tibetan Buddhism took place in 1982 in the lobby of the Ambarukmo Hotel in Yogyakarta.

Now Rio is one of Indonesia's leading photographers. His works have appeared in at least 15 books and various national and international media. He is also the director -- and an employee -- of INI (Image Network Indonesia), a visual media company that provides services on Indonesian cultural films and television documentaries.

The encounter, and the one-and-a-half-hour discussion he had with the spiritual leader in the evening, was a decisive moment in Rio's life. It profoundly strengthened his faith in Buddhism, and from that time he has been a faithful follower of Buddhism; diligently studying the religion's scriptures and regularly visiting Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives in exile.

"It was just like being struck by thunder. I have never met anybody like him before. His energy was so immense and powerful, and at the same time also so refreshing and liberating," Rio recalled during a recent interview at his house in Ubud, Bali.

The house overlooks a beautiful pond and a spacious green yard, where a small shrine with a Buddha statue is located. The second floor, an open room, is heavily decorated with Tibetan paintings and colorful prayer flags, and it is here that meditation and teaching session are held on a weekly basis.

"I believe that Karmic law (the law of causality), my deeds in my previous life, has been behind all the events in my life, my meeting with His Holiness and my interest in Buddhism. Do you know that I first entered the darkroom when I was 12 year old, and, strangely, the first picture I developed was one of Tibetan refugees in Switzerland?

"I have always been a seeker and, eventually, I accepted Buddhism because it makes sense, it makes much more sense than anything else," Rio said.

He spent most of his adolescent years seeking spiritual fulfillment and rebelling against his father, Alfian Yusuf Helmi, a high-ranking diplomat. At 17, he traveled to Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan (where he was enchanted by the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan) and Nepal, before staying for almost a year in India, where he threw away all his belongings and followed a saddhu (wandering sage) in a journey around the Himalayas.

Disillusioned with the saddhu, Rio flew to Australia via Bali to joint his girlfriend and a group of people who were experimenting with communal living. The skinny Rio quickly became a muscular heavy equipment operator, who was seriously learning about Buddhism from the commune's several Theravada Buddhist monks.

When his girlfriend became pregnant, Rio moved to Sydney and worked in the fashion industry to support his family. It was here that he developed his passion for photography, which later became a career.

Needless to say, the teachings of Buddhism have deeply influenced his professional life. His experiences on numerous assignments for various national and international media, such as Tempo, New York Times, Geo, Asiaweek, Seven Seas, and Vogue have made him fully aware of the heavy burden carried by a photographer.

"Sometimes it's the editor, sometimes it's the photographer himself, who, above all else, wants to get the most dramatic picture of human tragedy or suffering, and I can't blame them for that, but I personally have consciously tried to present the other side of that suffering," he said.

Rio recalls events during the May 1998 riots in Jakarta that mainly targeted the Chinese Indonesian community, and the way his fellow photographers competed to get the most terrifying and haunting images of that tragedy somehow made him sick. Instead of devouring the scenes of devastation -- destroyed buildings, charred and mutilated bodies, troops with loaded assault riffles -- Rio decided to explore the narrow alleys behind Glodok, a market that was virtually destroyed by rioters, and found the other truth of that otherwise humiliating tragedy.

"In one of the alleys I bumped into an interesting scene; an old Chinese man was playing chess with a Malay man, surrounded by people of different ethnic groups. Later I learned that during the riot, the people of that alley, regardless of their ethnicity, led by Betawi (native Jakartan) Muslim clerics, physically prevented the rioters from entering the alley.

"They challenged the rioters 'if you want to kill the Chinese then you must kill us first'. I found similar real-life displays of brotherhood in several other alleys. The problem is, did you hear this story on CNN?" he asks rhetorically.

Undoubtedly, he took a beautiful black-and-white photograph of that inspiring chess game.

Yet, Rio also confesses a personal dilemma concerning the coverage of war and violence. A part of him, the daring adventurer, wants to capture the grim reality while the other part presents his consciousness with enigmatic question about the moral responsibilities of a photographer.

This issue once had him in a heated discussion with his friend, the world acclaimed photo journalist James Nachtwey, who Rio described as a soft-spoken, refined man with "brutal" photographic works. Rio thinks that pictures and images play an important role in the modern human mind and consciousness, and he worries that repeatedly presenting people with images of violence and brutality might at a certain level make them numb.

But, on the other hand, he is also fully aware that the violence itself is real, not made up by the photographers.

"So it is a complicated issue. In the end, the thing that really matter is the true motivation of the photographer, what he wants to achieve by presenting certain images. I, myself, through my pictures only want to inspire people; inspire them to rejoice in life, to be open to and to appreciate other people," Rio said.

Perhaps, that is the reason he loves the works of Henri Cartier Bresson, Rene Burri and Raghu Rai, three photographers who have a deeper understanding of human nature and spirit.

And that is why despite his busy schedule as a professional photographer, Rio still finds the time to pursue his personal passion, creating inspiring works of photography, such as his ongoing project of documenting the people who have played a pivotal role in the development and change of Bali's cultural, social and political landscapes.

Part of this project was exhibited earlier this year under the title, Some People: Portraits of Bali in Transition.

Rio is also an active environmentalist, having cofounded Bali's most influential environmental NGO, Yayasan Wisnu. He is also involved in Yayasan Komodo, an NGO aimed at conserving the natural ecosystem of Komodo island in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province.

These days, this soft-spoken and mild-tempered man commutes regularly from Ubud to the Bali capital of Denpasar, where he gives free meditation courses to inmates at the island's central prison in Kerobokan and to struggling former and active drugs addicts under the care of the local NGO, Yayasan Hatihati.

And the Dalai Lama still plays an important role in his life. When in 2000 the Living Buddha gave him a gift of a digital camera, Rio immediately took it as a sign. Rio, who used to look at digital cameras with a sense of distrust, now works mostly with a digital Fuji S-1 Pro.

With all those spiritual journeys, professional achievements and a newly opened gallery of his work a few dozens meters down the road from his house, one might safely assume that Rio has reached the point where he can lie back and enjoy the passing of time.

Quite the contrary, this 47-year-old man still harbors a dream of selling his house, leaving his business and flying to India to deepen his understanding of Buddhism, and, ultimately, to become a monk.

"I am just an ordinary human being, who still has the courage to hope. A man who has found half of the answer, and is now searching for the other half."